Situation Report

AFP   Sept. 9, 2015

Geneva -- Guinea has notched up a week without a new case of Ebola, a first since March 2014, the head of the UN's response to the epidemic, Bruce Aylward, said on Wednesday.

Health workers with a patient under quarantine at the Nongo Ebola treatment centre in Conakry, Guinea on August 21, 2015 (AFP Photo/Cellou Binani)

"As of today, they have gone seven days without a (new) case of Ebola," said Aylward, the World Health Organization's special envoy for the epidemic.

"That is the longest period since March of last year that Guinea has gone without an Ebola case," he added.

There are two people in the country who have Ebola, but they tested postive before September 2.

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http://news.yahoo.com/guinea-passes-one-week-no-ebola-case-142016881.html

afro.who.int

Bamako, 7 September 2015 – A case of circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2 (cVDPV2) has been confirmed in Bamako, the capital and largest city of Mali. The country is on high alert after national authorities detected a paralysis case with onset 20 July 2015. The patient is a 19-month old child of Guinean nationality whose paralysis occurred 7 days prior to the child’s arrival in Bamako to seek health care. The last case of wild polio virus (WPV) in Mali dates back to June 2011 in Goundam, Timbuktu Region.

The current detected virus is genetically linked to a confirmed VDPV detected in Siguiri district, in the Kankan Region of Guinea in August 2014, and has been circulating across international borders for more than 2 years without detection. 

The risk of spread of this virus is deemed high and it has the capacity to cause paralytic disease in humans or kill. The emergence and circulation of VDPV2 reveals low population immunity against the virus due to low rates of vaccination coverage in Guinea. Consequently, oral polio vaccine (OPV) must be administered multiple times to stop the outbreak and protect children. 

TECH TIMES by rina Maria Doctor     Sept. 3, 2015
The World Health Organization (WHO) is set to vaccinate about 200 people in Sierra Leone, who were believed to have been directly or indirectly exposed to a woman who succumbed to death due to the virus on Saturday, Aug. 29.

The 67-year-old woman, whose diagnostic test results came positive for Ebola, was a merchant from the Kambia District, which is close to the border of Guinea. She died five days after Sierra Leone has begun a countdown projected to last for 42 days before the country may be declared free from the deadly virus. Before her diagnosis, the last patient diagnosed with the disease was reported on Aug. 8....

WHO will immunize the people in the area of Tonko Limba who have had direct and indirect exposures to the deceased, says Margaret Harris, a spokesperson from WHO. This effort will also include people who have had close contacts with the said exposed individuals....

Image:  A lobsterman threw back a lobster near Mount Desert, Me. in 2012. The catch in the area has reached record highs. Credit Robert F Bukaty/Associated Press

nytimes.com - September 3rd, 2015 - Carl Zimmer

Up in Maine, lobsters are thriving. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission reported last month that stocks there have reached a record high.

Down the coast, however, the story is different.

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